Startup Genome Project: first report available
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The one person who should be thrilled about this is Eric Ries. A lot of the findings boil down to what we’ve heard out of the lean startup community from some time now. Except instead of the insights of few luminaries, we seem to be getting a fairly similar set of findings from a somewhat scientific approach*. Stuff like:
- Have more than one founder, ideally with a mix of engineering and business backgrounds
- Finding out what people want and will pay for is harder than building it
- Mentors are important
- People in it for the money don’t win
- Willingness to adjust course is critical
There was one interesting finding that I’m going to look into a bit more:
Startups that pivot once or twice times [sic] raise 2.5x more money, have 3.6x better user growth, and are 52% less likely to scale prematurely than startups that pivot more than 2 times or not at all
This suggests that pivoting yields diminishing returns - somewhat contrary to the notion that pivoting early and often is the path to success. I’ll post an update when I’ve finished reading the report.
* I’m no scientist, but if it says “Genome” it’s gotta be legit right? ;-)
